Lap dogs

On the issue of gay rights, the media are letting Dick Cheney lead them by the nose

Last Wednesday, Bob Edwards of National Public Radio's Morning Edition asked GOP vice-presidential candidate Dick Cheney whether his openly lesbian daughter Mary had "influenced" his beliefs about gay rights. Cheney brushed the question off. "One of the things I've insisted on, Bob," he said, "is that my family is entitled to their privacy, and I simply don't respond to questions like that." Instead of challenging the candidate, Edwards moved on to a question about Cheney's voting record as a congressman. Incredibly, Edwards didn't even bother to ask about Cheney's viciously anti-gay voting record (which was one of the worst on Capitol Hill); instead he stayed with the ostensibly safer topics of "cop-killer" bullets and Head Start.

It's a scene that has played out with maddening familiarity since Cheney was named George W. Bush's running mate this summer. During an October 11 interview with the Los Angeles Times, Cheney insisted that his position on gay rights had not changed since his time in Congress. (But it's hard to see how his statement during the vice-presidential debate that "we live in a free society . . . that means that people should be free to enter into any kind of relationship they want to enter into" squares with his support of the ban on gays in the military. Or even with his vote against the Hate Crimes Statistics Act of 1988, which would have mandated collecting information on violent crimes motivated by race, religion, ethnicity, or sexual orientation.) He also refused to say whether his thoughts on the issue had been affected by his relationship with his daughter Mary. "She is entitled to her privacy," he told the Times. "That's where I've been all along since I accepted the assignment and I'm not going to change now."

This tells us something about Cheney, but it tells us even more about the press. It's not indicative, as some have said, of the press's inability to deal with gay issues. Rather, it shows how badly the press, when faced with sensitive issues, doesn't want to offend. And offensive politicians like Cheney know how to work this to their advantage. After all, Cheney has bullied the press before. During both the invasion of Panama in 1989 and the Persian Gulf War in 1991, as President George Bush's secretary of defense, he put the press in virtual lockdown.

In this month's issue of the American Journalism Review, Jacqueline Sharkey documents Cheney's extraordinary restrictions on war reporting. During the Gulf War, for example, reporters were confined to official press pools "led by military escorts," Sharkey writes. The military also ran "security reviews of all pool reports and detain[ed] journalists who tried to visit military units independently." Retired Army colonel David H. Hackworth, who reported on the Gulf War for Newsweek, says that Cheney's restrictions on the press ensured that "the American people did not get the truth" about the war.

So, did the press complain? Not really. A few wrote letters to the Pentagon and Cheney complaining about the policies. But they all complied with Cheney's rules. And, to make matters worse, the press is now displaying a less than elephant-like memory about Cheney's policies. CNN's Wolf Blitzer, as Sharkey notes, interviewed Cheney on July 30 and described him as "a man who speaks forthrightly"; during the same introduction, Blitzer "reminded viewers he had covered the Pentagon during the Gulf War." And the media are repeating their mistakes.

In 1991, reporters acquiesced to Cheney's outrageous press-pool policies because they didn't want to seem unpatriotic. In 2000, they don't ask Cheney about his relationship with his lesbian daughter because they don't want to appear rude. But by not pursuing the question of how Cheney's relationship with his daughter informs his opinions on one of the most controversial social issues of the day, the press is failing its constituency. The public not only has a right to know how Cheney's relationship with his lesbian daughter affects his beliefs about gay rights -- it needs to know. It's one thing for Senator Joseph Lieberman, for example, to change his position on school vouchers to join a race for the White House. It's quite another for Dick Cheney to run for office with a man who governs a state where the laws define Cheney's daughter as a criminal.

If nothing else, the press should ask why Cheney keeps saying that questions about how he's developed his views on gay issues would somehow violate his family's privacy. Mary Cheney worked as the director of corporate relations for gay and lesbian marketing for Coors Brewing Company before joining her father's vice-presidential campaign. In other words, she's not closeted. So what's Cheney's talking about when he talks about privacy? In this dull campaign, Cheney's seeming turnabout on gay issues is one of the more interesting developments. The press should be pursuing it.

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